My family knows that I like my keepsakes and have joked on occasion about the few things that I still have from all the way back from when I was a toddler. I would say from when I was a baby but I finally let go of a few of my baby clothes 2 years ago. But the comedic tone shifted dramatically after I watched Hoarders The Complete Season One. I was and you will be fascinated with watching people all across America who are unable to part with all of their belongings. I remember visiting a friend’s house and noticed her terrible housekeeping habits and now realize that it was “hoarding”…and now realize that over 3 million people in America are “hoarders!” Talk about eye opening.

Release Date: May 25, 2010
Running Time: 5h, 29 mins. + extras

One man’s garbage is another man’s…home.

HOARDERS, A&E’s record busting series (Season 2 premiered to over 3.2 million viewers) goes inside the topsy-turvy lives of people whose inability to part with their belongings is so out of control that they are on the verge of a personal crisis. Whether they’re facing eviction, the loss of their children, jail time, or divorce, they are all desperately in need of professional help. HOARDERS: THE COMPLETE SEASON ONE arrives on DVD on May 25, in a special edition featuring all 7 hour-long episodes and over 20 minutes of never-before-broadcast footage.

Each 60 minute episode focuses on two hoarders in crisis, capturing the drama in fly-on-the-wall style, as experts work to put the hoarders on the road to recovery. The healing won’t be easy, however, as cleaning is just the first step –like taking drugs away from an addict. For some, throwing away even the tiniest thing — a sponge, a button, an empty box — is so painful that they will not be able to allow the cleaning to be completed, no matter the consequences. For others, professional help and an organizer’s guidance give them the strength to recover. At the end of each episode, the show reveals who has been able to keep their hoarding behavior at bay and who, despite help, is still lost inside this painful disease.

Going into this series, you must understand that hoarding is apparently a mental disorder because if you cannot understand and accept that than this is not the right show for you to watch. You will feel much more uneasy than you already will feel as you watch if you cannot accept this fact. Really, this is hard to watch for anyone because it is disturbing to know that these human beings are living in the conditions that they are. The most unpleasant episodes for me have to be “Jake / Shirley” and “Kerrylea / Lauren.” Jake seems phony and threatens suicide and Kerrylea was being extremely difficult, barely letting the moving crew help. Oh no, wait, that’s not the worst of it. One senior woman’s issues wasn’t so much about hoarding things as it was about hoarding animals.

As a huge lover of cats, I was heartbroken to find that (Spoiler Alert!) there were over 70 cats found in this woman’s home and about 40 of them were dead (some long dead, brittle skeletons). This episode is quite graphic and highly disturbing, especially for animal lovers. Thankfully, psychologists and professional organizers were on hand to guide and help every hoarder every step of the way in cleaning out not only their homes but their cluttered and distorted ways of thinking. If only it didn’t take all of this for someone to come to their senses for the sake of their well being (and others). Ah, so sad. This series as a whole will scare you into keeping your house tidy everyday if you already don’t keep it as presentable as possible. Whether you enjoy the series or not, it will make you think twice about the things that take up space in your life. If you need that reminder, it is worth owning on DVD.

Additional Footage: (21:13 minutes)
A few minutes of extra footage from each episode is shared. Some footage shared has more background information about the hoarders and their families, while the rest of the footage just shows a few extra moments of the hoarders being conflicted with their decisions to continue to clean out their mess. There is nothing fascinating that you must see in the extra footage, so I’d skip it. What would have been quite an intriguing bonus feature would have been catching up with the hoarders 6 months later to see how their progress is. Of course there is an update to read about where the hoarders are a few months down the line right before the end credits, but that is just not satisfying enough. After watching the entire season, you will find yourself rooting for these hoarders to get long term help, so a tangible update would have been more fulfilling. So if you have 20 minutes to lose, check out the additional footage, otherwise it is a skip.

Hoarders The Complete Season One is available May 25, 2010 on DVD.